have cauldron, will travel

the alchemist has taken to the skies again...last seen at sunset gathering windfall leaves on Russian Hill at the corner of Larkin and Greenwich. sadly the wee cauldron is struggling a bit on the reduced diet of 110 volts!

but in the meantime there are bouquets to bestow...firstly on Qantas who surprised me with an upgrade to bizclass on check-in. thanks, oh giant flying Skippy. it was lovely.

and then another bouquet to the Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco who also gave me an upgrade - meaning i'm spending the next three nights in a king-size bed in a spacious room on the eleventh floor with a lovely corner balcony and windows that open AND a delumpshous Japanese soaking bath [in which i am about to immerse myself]

on the way across the Big Blue Pond i felt obliged to test if knitting is permitted again. 

it is. photographic evidence below.  

what bemused me on arrival though is the endearing optimism of the local border guard. i won't put the image here for fear of being flung out of the country on my ear but do they really think that 

those people who are actually drug addicts or [and this is as it's printed on the form] perpetrators of "gross moral turpitude" or espionage agents are actually going to tick the "yes" box on the wee green incoming passenger form?

and while we're on the subject of green, here's the obligatory 'view from the hotel window' - an illuminated garden from the point of view of a passing pigeon

 

ka kite ano, Aotearoa...

told  you those swedes was as big as housies...just compare them to the not insubstantial steps [leading up to the Baptist Centre]

and here are the delicious greens slow brewed from a cocktail of green plants. the deepest colour [top right] was taken up by [drum roll] a scrap of wool fabric.

i love wool. it's a miracle fibre. sucks up plant colour, keeps one warm even when wet, can be knitted/woven/felted/stitched or a combination of any of these, is fire-resistant [EXCEPT when superwashed - grrr] and is a sustainable renewable resource [when the sheep flock is managed properly]

 

wandering on from Gore i arrive in Wellington [via Invercargill and Christchurch].  i love flying into Welly. the scenery is magic and when the sun sparkles on everything i know it's going to be a splendid afternoon.

in fact, tis my first afternoon "off" for some time - travel days don't really count as downtime - having squeezed eight days of teaching into a relatively short trip.  the hectic schedule reinforces my decision to restrict future teaching to longer "retreats" once present commitments are honoured. good things take time and it shouldn't be about rushing to finish a "product". this work is about journey and process and whatever object is made during a workshop is merely the icing on the cupcake

so anyway, here i am in lovely Welly. first call is Minerva Bookshop on Cuba Street to collect some kimono that Anne Scott [the proprietor] very kindly picked up for me during a sale at Asia Gallery [and had been hoarding in the store cupboard for some time]

Minerva is one of my favourite bookstores along with Matilda's [Stirling, South Australia], City Lights [San Francisco, USA], Artisan [Fitzroy, Victoria], Ariel [Sydney, NSW] and that yummy architectural bookstore on Montgomery Street [also in San Francisco]

at Minerva i browse. in fact i browse for some time. resistance is useless and i come away with "The architecture of the Quilt - Gee's Bend". i hope to study some of these quilts at the San Jose Museum of Textiles next week...

at 3 pm i wander across Cuba to visit my friend Roger for a lovely chat about art and the whirled and our respective wanderings and what we think about stuff. oh, and he kindly inks my favourite phrase for me...

this of course requires a visit to the Flying Burrito Brothers for a celebratory margarita. 

it's good. [nearly as good as the delicious one, oops, two that Pat mixed for me at Nelson, bless her cotton socks]

their food is fab as well but i have other plans and wander on

sadly there isn't time for visits to all my usual haunts. the Northland Panels and the Botanic Garden will have to wait for next time. so will the Green Parrot.

i have a girlie night planned with my friends Cleo and Rachelle. we eat fish and chips from the Wellington Trawling Seamarket [conveniently located just across the road from my digs] and drink wine made by Cleo's father

we look at treasure that Rachelle has brought in her basket of tricks

we sit and stitch and talk and drink wine and then tea. several cups of tea. it's good.

Rachelle glows.

in fact we all glow happily together, three skinsisters sitting on the floor of a secondfloor helltell room on Cuba Street...

hotere

gore [shucks]

after five delightful days teaching in the Nelson region i hop on another magic broomstick and fly to Invercargill via Christchurch

the ground below looks as though someone has casually flung a velvet quilt in a crumpled heap and sprinkled it with icing sugar

at Invercargill i am met and driven to Gore

there are wild animals on the outskirts of Edendale 

at Gore evening falls shortly after i find my digs. nonetheless i wander out to explore

 i discover that i've just missed the Golden Guitar Festival

luckily some of the stars are frozen in time

i take close-ups as well, but will spare you

down by the railway track there is treasure. had i the farm ute i would fill it with these brilliant fish plates.  ah well

in the morning i walk to my next workshop, marvelling at the vernacular architecture.

here Cape Cod meets arts-and-crafts

reminding me of a limerick

there was a young lass from Cape God

who thought babies were fashioned by God

twas not the Almighty

who hiked up her nightie

but Roger the lodger, the sod!

oh. alright. enough. 

Gore is an interesting place. they grow swedes [vegetables not people] the size of houses. everybody eats them....cows, sheep, people and even a dog i met. the animals eat them raw but some folks turn them into soup. the recipe includes peanut butter.

despite having lots of lovely rain the town water supply is pumped from a bore. something special in this water gives us the best and most beautiful green dye from a cocktail of Choisya ternata, ragwort and bronze fennel [incidentally the bulb of the latter is also tasty when steamed with mussels, tomatoes, chili and garlic....an excellent all purpose weed!]

the town also has a brilliant art gallery which boasts an extraordinary art collection

i am riveted by the work of Ralph Hotere 

more about him later

following a piece of dried marmalade along the map

shortly after 5 am on the 26th i pootle off to the airport

again

driving in fog

and in the dark

a nice person at the checkin desk

smiles sweetly when i make noises about

a window seat 

right-hand side of plane

in front of the wing

and so later i gaze happily at the alps as the aircraft heads towards Wellington

after a while there are clouds

thick clouds

like a fat feather quilt rumpled over a big bed

the next day dawns golden at Nelson

where we work at Fairfield

a beautiful old house saved for the enjoyment of the community

by dedicated workers who restored it

and run it with passion

despite standing on the brink of winter

we find beautiful leaves to dye with

steam wraiths play in the winter sunlight

sunset comes early so my evening wanderings begin at twilight 

the bare branches of Liriodendron tulipfera echo the patterns of the little rivulets traversing the mudflats exposed when the tide of Tasman Bay runs out

i am too mesmerised  by that view [some while later] to take a picture

 

golden sunsets look much warmer than they are

the snow sneaks up quietly

in the night

dusts the landscape like someone

sprinkling icing sugar over grannie's velvet shawl

secure in the flying cocoon

i gaze

and shoot

and gaze some more

flying south

via Invercargill

to visit Gore

slowness

on the way home from Warrnambool i spent time with someone whose work i respect and whose opinions and thoughts i value very highly. during conversation he introduced me to TED, a fascinating site that offers talks [by people with passion] about an diverse range of subject matter 

he also kindly took the photo above for me as i wasn't carrying a camera...

i wandered thither during a quiet moment yesterday and was delighted to find a talk by Carl Honore, advocate of slowness. his philosophy of undertaking tasks or activities individually rather than multi-tasking and of being fully engaged with the matter at hand sings most harmoniously with the mantra "time is your friend"... something i've been telling my students for a long time

the dyebath above ... a slow cauldron of choisya ternata in a copper pot, contained within a larger stainless steel pot [to save the copper pot from the flames] only revealed full potential after many hours of gentle steeping

but well worth the effort, the lovely fresh green it produced being notoriously tricky to achieve according to traditional plant dye texts

during that same week a slow windfall walk revealed other treasures too, colours that cannot be achieved through traditional dye extraction but are visible [ie unaffected by the water of the dyebath] when processed in contact

the print above was from a fungus growing in the lawn...

speaking of slowness and of taking time... news has reached me that a recent student is already formulating plans for a plant dye course she will teach at her college. a most laudable notion, certainly, but not something i would have felt comfortable proposing after a relatively short exposure to the field. perhaps, though, she has a long dye history that i'm completely unaware of, but given the bombardment of questions that were coming my way from that quarter for a month or so i suspect that may not be the case

the book Eco Colour was only published after many years research into dyeing with plants and now [some two years since handing the manuscript to my publisher] i feel i have as much still to learn. i'm deeply grateful to my many students for their brave experiments in classes over the years - fifteen people bringing their own hand to the same pool of materials discover so much more than one person working alone in a studio

and maybe there's the lesson in this, that by teaching a skill one actually learns more about it...

so i wish her luck and look forward to the development of new and exciting ecologically sustainable dye techniques emerging from the west country of that Green and Pleasant land

and remember, go slow... 

a pool in a forest

i wandered eastward last week 

refreshed a few incantations by dipping them in the sea

stood in reviving rain

found treasure by [yet another] railway track

gloried in green

on land as well as cloth

rediscovered friends

in various places

and then while taking a quiet moment in a forest

before beginning the road home

gazed down at The Beastie  

to find it transformed

casting bouquets of nasturtiums?

a participant in a recent workshop has suggested via email that there may have been a hidden ingredient in the dyepots used by the class, as said participant has apparently had difficulty in replicating class samples at home

it was even implied that the eucalyptus leaves i had brought from home had caused the results to be brighter and richer than might otherwise have been possible

said participant had made samples from leaves she had brought to the class herself. the samples were really very beautiful.  

the really funny thing in all this is that because the leaves i had brought with me were quite dry, ecoprints from them were mere shadows of what they might have been [although when brewed in the usual way they produced the anticipated rich orange-red] and were far eclipsed by the ecoprints produced by our friend.

i have only once before carried dye materials from home and that was specifically in order to demonstrate the difference that the water used as a substrate makes when extracting dyes from eucalypts. the sample from home was a deep rust red, the sample produced at Hyderabad for the UNESCO conference was a mustard yellow. same leaves [picked on same day from same tree], same merino jersey, stainless steel [non-reactive] vessel, but different water.

so, what have i learned from this exchange? i've learned to practice what i preach..use only local  materials and DON'T bring dye materials from elsewhere, it only leads to confusion. i'll stick to what i have done 99% of the time and just work with what i find available near the workshop location

there really ain't no mysteries to what i do, folks, just the simple magic of leaves, cloth and water

oh, and a few muttered incantations learned from an ancient crone in the shadow of a crystal boulder by an enchanted lake in a mysterious forest... east of the sun and west of the moon  

smoke and mirrors

spotted during my early morning perambulations in lovely Lier, Belgium

yes, you're seeing that correctly, those are leaf-shaped prints and here's a closer look 

lovely aren't they....but imagine the trouble involved in printing this fabric using synthetic dyes - when it could have been so much simpler [and far less poisonous] with a handful of leaves.

sigh